Fifteen years in couture means you have earned the right to look back - not with nostalgia, but with confidence and pride knowing how far you’ve come. For her twenty-third Haute Couture collection, Ulyana Sergeenko does exactly that. The Archive Collection takes its heroine on a journey through her own history, moving across fifteen years of past collections; some evoking the characters of noir fairy tales and myths, others drawing from floral and natural motifs, with a distinct narrative unfolding around birds, expressed in a light, joyful look in radiant yellow and in a more dramatic interpretation rendered in dark tones.

The central thread, however, is the archives themselves. A corset and scarf-skirt assembled from strips of silk in violet, green and ochre recalls the striped Bekasam silk of the Kazakhstan collection of 2014. A dress constructed from ‘scarves’ echoes the Quiet Flows the Don collection of 2019.

 

Running through it all is the sense of irony that has always been intrinsic to Sergeenko's DNA. Embroidered roosters feature alongside bags and headpieces shaped like hens, referencing Russian folk tales, literary narratives and Ulyana's own childhood memories - introducing notes of humour and lightness that balance the inherent grandeur of couture silhouettes. An evening coat inspired by the Art Deco aesthetics of the 1930s and the Party collection of 2021 is adorned with crystal figurines of amber-caramel hens. The collection's most ceremonial piece - a wedding gown, is embellished with crystal cat heads, a subtle nod to the feline motif explored in the Party collection of 2020.

The palette is built around red, snow white, black and gold, and each colour carries its own emotional weight. Crimson appears in rich, warm tones reminiscent of forest berries and the Maison's rocking-horse emblem - one of the collection's most striking looks evoking the deep red hues of berry preserves served in a crystal dish, developing ideas first introduced at the debut Haute Couture show from 2012. The black ensembles are inspired by chthonic mythological figures, with a knitted bodysuit adorned with embroidery and drapery reminiscent of rib-like contours and gloves finished with hand-sculpted claws embellished with beadwork. The most dramatic black moment is an homage: a dress and widow's veil of silk net adorned with handcrafted blueberries, each composed of dozens of layers of tulle in varying shades, recalling Natalia Vodianova's final appearance at the Maison's debut Haute Couture show in Paris. The atelier's artisans spent no fewer than one hundred hours of handwork creating the blueberries for this single look alone.

 

The craftsmanship throughout is extraordinary and deliberate: the lace components of a single corset - a structured piece in satin duchesse complemented by decorative elements inspired by lace-making pillows and bobbins, required more than 1,500 hours of work by the artisans of the Kruzhevnoy Krai atelier. This season also marks the first collaboration between the Maison and the masters of Balakhna lace and Kazakovo filigree, alongside ongoing partnerships with Yelets Lace and the Gus-Khrustalny crystal artisans. The result is a collection in which every stitch, every crystal element, and every carefully placed feather carries the essence of a tradition being actively preserved.

Fifteen years, twenty-three collections, and each one is a world entirely its own.